


Sorrows And Joys (Low Spark)

by kittydesade



Category: Secret History - Tartt
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stolen moment between two young men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorrows And Joys (Low Spark)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Intoxicarcerate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intoxicarcerate/gifts).



"Don't be ridiculous."

"Henry..."

We were nineteen. One year past, we had been fresh and new and full of ideas about how our education would proceed. Julian had changed all of that. How we looked at the world. How we thought and felt and reacted. We were becoming young men, our minds given space and room to develop as easily as giving us larger clothes to grow into. It was a heady experience.

I should, I suppose, have known better. Francis could be so damned sensitive sometimes, despite the fact that he had nothing to be ashamed of. But these things often escape me.

We were at Francis's house for the winter holidays. He had wanted to show it off a bit, I think, and none of us had anticipated the need to make plans; we had been so caught up in the wonder of our new studies, the world of the sublime, Julian called it. Rightly so. It was sublime, what we spoke of and learned and the new ways we came to think and see the world. Never in my life to that point had I met a man who had such a perspective on how people worked on each other and on the agencies in their lives. You might call it fate, and some did, but I believed that we all came together that year and in that place for a purpose.

Certainly nothing that followed would have happened, had we not, and several people might now be happier for it.

I enjoyed the quiet we could have at Francis's house, as we all thought of it, although it was more of a family estate. There was both time and space to read without being interrupted, to explore the grounds, to do anything we liked, really. After having to worry about finding a suitable location where we wouldn't be interrupted at school, or anything resembling an ounce of privacy, it was very welcome. I intended to spend as much time as I could with my independent studies.

It was also during the winter holidays that Francis told me what we had all already surmised about him. I knew of Francis's predilections, of course. He liked to pretend that he was secretive about it, and it was wiser of him to do so, for the manner of our time still frowned on such things. Not quite to the extent of old England to which the college pretended it belonged, but enough that it was safer for him to keep such impulses quietly hidden away. In high school he had been more concerned with pleasing his parents than exploring his urges, and as a result it came out that I was the first person he had told since he had discovered this quality in himself. He rambled on a great deal before he came to the point, not unpleasantly, but enough to tell me that he had never been with a lover before, either.

It must have made him dreadfully unhappy.

I took his hands in mine and told him what I felt. That it didn't matter who he loved so long as he did love, and that was my honest opinion on the matter. I think it made him feel better, though he didn't say anything for the longest time and when he did it had nothing to do with the subject at hand, just an idle comment. My hands, he said, were like ice. But he didn't pull his hands away.

I held his hands in mine for a while longer and against his protests, which were half-hearted at best. He wouldn't meet my gaze, looked at everything in the room before he would look at me. I tried to tell him again that it didn't matter.

"Why?" he frowned. "Why doesn't it matter? Shouldn't it matter?"

I blinked at him. "Why should it?"

"I..." He was trying to come up with a reason that seemed plausible or logical, I could tell. But he couldn't think of any.

I remember that I quoted some aphorism of Socrates on the nature of love between brothers, but I don't remember which one it was. Then I touched my hand to his cheek and he looked at me with wide eyes. We sat there for several minutes while the potentials for action spread out between us like some fortune teller's cards. I could picture the story of each one. Then he took my glasses away and everything was a blur.

We kissed. It was his idea, not mine. I don't think I would have thought of anything that happened next on my own. His lips tasted of cigarettes and strawberry lip balm. He must have borrowed it from Camilla.

I think that was when he believed me. It would have been hard for him to formulate any argument at all with my lips pressed to his, a bit clumsily, I admit. I had never kissed a man before. It turned out to be not so different from kissing a woman, but I had done very little of that, either. I was curious. And I liked Francis, he was a good person.

His fingers fumbled over the buttons. I don't think he knew what it was he truly wanted when he was offered anything in the world. I let him, because I didn't know the first thing about what to do in this situation. He touched me like I was some marble statue he wanted to examine in minute detail, all fingertips and kid gloves and his breath and hands were the only part of him that touched me for a little while.

I had to take his face in my hands and lift him bodily up to kiss him again. I don't think he expected that.

He treated kissing as though it was something furtive and shameful, to be hidden behind closed doors or in alcoves at those absurd parties the students liked to attend. I tried to teach him how to be bold, although it was my first time and to this day I'm not entirely sure it was the best thing to do. But I've always been more certain of myself than he was. I know who I am, and what I am, and generally I'm at least somewhat aware of what I want and what I should receive, which are not always the same thing. Francis has never known who he was in his life.

He knew what he wanted sexually, at least, if in no other arena. Which was good because I had only a very technical view of things. There were scriptures of all kinds on what boys do with other boys but there was no scripture on what Francis liked to do. He must have thought on the subject for a long time, never imagining that he would have the opportunity to carry it out with anyone. I asked, once or twice, when I was unclear on the concept. He blushed, and I had to ask him to repeat it, which he did.

The whole business was quite enjoyable in ways I had not expected. There was a difference to the way our bodies fit together, and the newness was pleasure in and of itself. I thought about telling him so, but that would have implied that I hadn't wanted to. Which was certainly not the case. I was happy to, it was simply a thing I had never done before and had no expectations of. I think he worried about whether or not I would reject him, now knowing him more intimately than any other.

Afterwards he lay with his head pillowed on my chest, Ganymede with Zeus or perhaps Patroclus with Achilles, as some scholars liked to say. As though I was the older and more experienced one, when we were the same age and neither of us knew anything about what we had done. It seemed absurd that he would defer to me in any such matters, but as I said, he didn't know what it was he truly wanted.

I had no interest in Francis as a lover. It had been a nice idea beforehand but I thought about it as we lay there, his cool legs pressed between and against mine, and it didn't sound as though we would be anything like an acrimonious couple. He was too nervous and prone to doing unwise things under the influence of alcohol or other substances, and I needed my routine and my quiet. Undoubtedly I would say something while suffering one of my headaches that Francis would take entirely too seriously and then there would be a fight. I didn't have the patience for that sort of thing.

Which is not to say that I didn't like him because we had had sex. Or that I didn't like him at all. I wondered if he thought that, and kissed his forehead, then kissed his mouth when he tilted his head to look up at me.

"You don't..." he started, then tried to extricate himself from the bed and myself. "Sorry."

I kept ahold of his arm, because, really, now. He was being foolish. "Don't be ridiculous. There is nothing to be sorry for, and no reason to regret."

He gave me an incredulous look, as though I was the one being foolish or extravagant in some way. It was the same sort of look he gave me when I had suggested a holiday in Belize; I knew it well. "Nothing to be sorry for? I pretty much forced myse..."

"Francis." My tone was sharper than it needed to be, but it got the point across. "You did not force yourself on anyone. I doubt you would ever force yourself on anyone in your life." He really was a sweet boy. I touched his cheek as though we were...

... well, for this afternoon, this space, we were lovers, weren't we.

"I didn't mean to drag you into this," Francis said, after a short period of being very quiet and staring at my clavicle, I think because his head was tucked at a lower level than mine.

"Don't be ridiculous," I told him, and kissed him again. There was little point to speaking of it further if we were only going to go in circles.


End file.
